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Sunday, 24 August 2014

Hello Birmingham, Bye bye George

In my last post I said that today was the day I was due to turn into a hormonal, miserable, emotional nightmare. Not so peeps! I'm in a bloody good mood! I didn't need the steroids they gave me at all, I just needed a day in my beloved motherland Birmingham! Best city in the world. Best people in the world. My heart belongs to you, Birmingham!Here's why I'm so happy....Yesterday my lovely friend Lucy drove me to Brum for my appointment at Trendco, a wig specialist in Birmingham. In all honesty, while I was desperate to go because of the anxiety of the impending clumps-of-hair-falling-out-and-turning-into-George-Dawes doom, I was not looking forward to it. My association with wigs is that of my mom having to wear them for most of her last 6 years alive because of her own cancer and chemotherapy treatment. After my mom died at the end of 2012, one of my jobs was to clear out her house- this included getting rid of her wigs. I'm not sure there's anything more creepy than walking in to the bedroom of your mom who has died and seeing her hair displayed on a stand. And then walking in to the spare room and seeing her hair displayed on another stand. And then finding a bag of a dozen of her old wigs that are past it, but have been kept (knowing mom) "just in case". And then being given the wig that she was wearing when she went in to the hospital before she died along with her handbag etc......Anyway, you get the point. I don't like wigs. Having said that, I don't want to walk around bald either, and I'm not convinced I can pull off looking anything other than like a cancer patient in a headscarf so I knew an amazing wig was what I needed. Luckily of course, I was in Birmingham. Best city in the world, best people in the world. I was instantly put at ease by the lovely woman Naomi who I had my appointment with at Trendco. Naomi spends all day with people, aged from 3 to 98 years old, who have lost their hair due to illnesses like cancer and alopecia. She was absolutely fantastic, knew her stuff, and got a measure of me within minutes. The first wig I tried on was a synthetic one, which I hated, and Naomi's next move was basically to find me a real human hair wig, which is very, very much like my own hair, and which was absolutely the right one. My wig is called Emerald! Naomi sorted out the parting for me, got me straightening it, and explained how I could have it cut and coloured how I wanted. That was it - sorted! At the moment it feels kind of big and weird to me, but that's partly because my own hair is still there underneath it. But once that's gone if it still feels too big and thick, along with having it cut and coloured, Naomi can thin it out for me a bit too. I'm not skilled at taking selfies in mirrors but here are a couple of photos I took this morning.

So if I wake up tomorrow and find that my hair deserted me overnight, I'm ready for it! Next job: learn how to draw on eyebrows in case they abandon me too.